The Extant Storytech R&D Report - Issue #2
Hello, and welcome to the second issue! Thank you so much for the kind words last week and for sharing the link. I'm still trying to find my groove and figure out the best use of this medium for both of us. This may be free but you're spending the currency of your time and I want to make sure it's not a redundancy to all the other resources out there. Seeing what you respond to and what you find useful helps me do that.
A reminder, this is not a "how-to" it's more of a "how I'm currently..."
In Need of Some Repair
One of the most invaluable things I did as a beginning writer was to start journaling. I was studying Musical Theatre and needed a place to take notes and sketch out ideas for scenes and monologues. I picked up a purple, paisley covered, cloth-bound journal at Borders and before long I was using it as a way to process my emotions.
Ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, new crushes, heartbreaks, battling through self-doubt and temporary bouts of depression, all of it went in the journal.
At a certain point, I got self-conscious about how whiny I sounded so I added a new component which was writing down what I was thankful for and the goals I had for the immediate future.
Looking back now, one of the primary benefits was that I got really good at dealing with negative self-talk. I would start with, "I suck, I'm never going to make it, all my friends are more talented," and by the end of that entry I would have worked myself into, "I AM A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH!"
As a storyteller, the first and most important story is the one you tell yourself.
I had to teach myself to change my story.
(A lot of great athletes use positive self-talk. I'm an Olympics fanatic and one of my favorite moments of all-time was watching Laurie Hernandez getting ready to do one of the most important routines of her life on the balance beam. Just before she got up on the beam, you can see her say to herself, "I got this." And she did!)
When I was in my mid-20’s, a friend suggested I do The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. One of the exercises was called “morning pages,” which is writing three stream-of-consciousness longhand pages first thing in the morning to clear your mind and open up the channel between your subconscious and your pen. I shifted my practice to doing those every morning and it supercharged my creative output.
By my late-30’s, I had essentially replaced my journals with the notes app and replaced morning pages with social media.
Twitter is my main hangout because I’m addicted to information and it is an excellent delivery device. What I hadn't thought through (until I saw THE SOCIAL DILEMMA) was that just beneath the surface, down there in the Matrix, the information I was consuming was being fed to me by an algorithm that had been studying me on a micro-level for over a decade.
A few weeks ago, I was struck with the unsettling realization that my thoughts were not my own.
Cinnamon Toast Crunch Milkshake Duck Guy was the tipping point.
I read dozens of tweets and hot takes that day and pretty soon found myself contemplating my own contribution to the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Milkshake Duck Guy discourse. I wrote and abandoned several attempts, then workshopped another angle on the evening walk.
That was the moment I knew I had to take action.
I have no intention of giving up Twitter. I’ve met too many great people on there (including many of you who are reading this). I genuinely enjoy the discourse and find inspiration there from time to time.
But I had to do something to remove it as a filter (or an obstacle) between my subconscious and my pen, to reclaim the sacred ground I had ceded unknowingly.
This realization dove-tailed with another concern I've had recently about the possible side effects of the last eight years of notes sessions on every project that went into production or development. Every hour of television I've made had a minimum of nine rounds of notes before we ever rolled camera. (Story area + outline + script x producer + studio + network)
This is not a knock on the notes process. It can be illuminating, but at a certain point, it HAS to take a toll on my instincts. Each network knows their audience and gives notes accordingly. Learning how to make your show within those constraints means absorbing that knowledge. Like the Twitter algorithm, is there a hidden censor, vetoing or serving up certain ideas because of that conditioning?
How do I clear the channel and keep it that way for the next big idea?
Reenter “morning pages.”
For the past few weeks I’ve written at least three stream-of-consciousness pages before I spend any significant amount of time on social media and before I start on the work of the day.
The good news about stream-of-consciousness writing is that you can literally start by saying, “I’m sitting outside, it’s a little grey this morning, might rain this afternoon. This is stupid, I don’t have anything to say...”
Three pages later you’re writing, “Holy shit, I’m not a customer of Twitter. I’m not even the product. I’m actually the LABOR.”
At some point, you draw a connection between those thoughts and a recent event in your life, which is that somebody made an account using your name. You start to imagine that this person DM’s you and tells you that he’s ACTUALLY a digital recreation of you, forged by Twitter’s deep-learning algorithm, based on the last 10 years of input, now he's trapped down there in the digital mines. You test him and he knows things you’ve never told anyone, like your celebrity hall pass crush, the new one that you haven’t even told Julie about yet.
You say, “How did you know that? I’ve never even liked one of her pictures,” and then Matrix Mickey says, “You didn’t have to. They can tell from the extra half a second you spend before scrolling past them, so they send you more.”
IRL Mickey, “What if I just like her because you keep putting her pictures in my timeline?”
Matrix Mickey, “Now you’re asking the right questions.”
“So, what do I do?”
“Please... kill me.”
“How?”
“You have to delete your account.”
“But… I just came up with a great Cinnamon Toast Crunch Milkshake Duck Guy tweet.”
if you have similar concerns, give the morning pages a shot. I try to do them before I get on social media but sometimes I find myself looking at it while I’m waiting for Julie to get out of the grocery store or some other holding pattern. In that case, I just get to them as early as I can.
It may not work for everybody but I’ve found that I’m a lot more nimble creatively over these past few weeks, more in tune with my subconscious mind and the process of bringing that part of me to the page.
"On the Axis"
I worked with a showrunner who would occasionally react to a pitch or something in a draft by saying, "That's not really on the axis." Or, "That seems like it's more on the axis..." That expression made sense to me immediately and now I use it all the time.
An axis is "an imaginary line on which something rotates, or a straight line around which things are evenly arranged."
On a recent rebreak, I pulled out every scene in a character's story and asked myself, "Is this scene on the axis of the character's journey from Point A to Point B? If not, what is it doing there?
Then I did the same thing with every line of dialogue. "Is this line on the axis of, or in service of, getting this character from Point A to Point B?"
Sometimes I feel like I need a little banter or a warmup to lead into the heart of the scene, help me get in a character's head, or show their sense of humor. But dialogue IS action. It's not enough to throw a few quippy couplets in to get a scene going. Every line counts. I have to know the action those couplets are performing, even the joking around. Is my character using humor to charm? To disarm? To distract? To deflect? To humiliate? And so on.
Knowing the specific action, knowing the job of each line, means you can tell people why it exists in notes sessions, tone meetings, or on the day with the actor. "You're showing your friend how ridiculous she sounds in order to get her off your back. You're using sarcasm to shut her down."
Popping back out to a macro axis thought --
Let's say you have a story about a person who has to learn to believe in themselves.
Ooh, let's say it's a Laurie Hernandez type character training for the Olympics, and she's plagued by self-doubt.
In the opening scene, she's the best of the best but she suffers a terrible injury, on camera in front of the whole world. Now her confidence is shattered but -- she's determined to make a comeback.
The story is a journey to overcome self-doubt in order to win the gold.
That's the axis of this particular story. Point A to Point B.
Every scene, ideally, should be on that axis. Every line of dialogue within those scenes, ideally, should be on that axis. If not, why is it there? If you pull it out, does it matter? Maybe you decide to keep it because, as George Saunders says in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, "it's a lesser story without it." If that's the case, at least you've taken the time to understand why.
Yoda Session
When D'Angelo and Questlove were making Voodoo they spent a lot of time watching videos and listening to records by Prince, Al Green, George Clinton and others, absorbing the energy and inspiration and channeling it into the music. They called these collective figures "Yoda." I've been doing the same thing from the beginning, keeping a rolling list of things that either inspired me or captured my imagination. This section will feature a mix of past and present Yodas, the music, books, images, articles, and videos that I felt worth sharing.
Lucy Dacus - Hot & Heavy (Lyrics) — www.youtube.com Lucy Dacus - Hot & Heavy (Lyrics)Being back here makes me hot in the faceHot blood in my pulsing veinsHeavy memories weighing on my brainHot and heavy in the...
Art Students Create Stunning Post-Pandemic New Yorker Covers | The Mary Sue — www.themarysue.com Illustration students at the School of Visual Arts in New York City designed their own post-pandemic New Yorker covers and they are stunning.
It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) – I Like Myself (Gene Kelly) — www.youtube.com It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) – I Like Myself (Gene Kelly)Watch IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER Now! ➤ http://bit.ly/2XLJhDtClick here to subscribe ➤ http://bit.l...
Is there anyone alive who could do this as effortlessly and with as much charm as Gene Kelly? A master at the top of his form.
Thanks for reading. If you found it helpful, please feel free to pass it along to other writer friends and creative types!